Today at the combini, I spied this new drink: Nodojiman. I’m mystified by the name. Nodo is throat, but Jiman mean “boasting” so I have a feeling that I’m missing something here…there are musical notes on the label and the character on the label is a uvula, so maybe it’s a pun I don’t understand.

Anyway, Nodojiman is a slightly fizzy, sweet, quince flavoured drink. It tastes a lot like nodo ame, what we’d call cough drops, but nodo ame literally translates to “throat candy.”

I thought that the back of the Nodojiman label was really funny. For your dry throat, your dry heart, your dry life…”

Quince has magical properties to cure sore throats. Called karin in Japanese, it’s a key ingredient in all of the Japanese cough drops and has long been used as an herbal remedy. But I don’t know if it can cure your dry life.